I use and love aWeber for my email system.

I could hand build a great pop up window with aWeber, but it was going to be a lot of work, so I kept putting it off.

Then I tried Floating Window.  It more than doubled my sign up rate, it integrates with my aWeber account and it really is as simple as they show in this video.

There was one thing that I did not like.  I could not have it only pop up once per visit.  So to solve that, I added it only to the front page, but not the sub pages, that still use a simpleraWeber form.

If you want to save time, impress people with a great pop-up email offer and get more people to opt into your email list, I recommend Floating Window.

OK, if you remember from the last article, we have assumed you are now sophisticated marketers that are blogging, writing and using social media effectively.

One of the big mistakes that I see people make, and that I have made, is by focusing on the big picture too much.

Lets take a business example of this first.  You probably know certain metrics for your business. 

• How many customers you have
• How much money you spend
• How much money you make
• How many hours you work

Good, you can calculate your profitability divided by your hours and get a clear sense of what you are earning.

But what would happen if you broke down each client as a profit center?

Unless you are selling widgets at the same price to everyone, you will see that some customers are much more profitable and take up less time than others.  If your business model is designed around maximizing value AND profit while minimizing your time involved PER client, you will have a successful business.

Internet Marketing is Exactly the Same

Instead of thinking of your Internet Marketing, start thinking about various Internet profit centers.  This can get tricky, because one could generate the lead and the second can generate the revenue.

Let me take my email course as an example.  It costs roughly $20 per month.  Our main website and several blogs generate the people that sign up for it, and this email system actually generates sales for us when people are interested in our products or affiliate links.  It has a high profit margin but by itself does not pay enough to support me.

I have other websites that do not sell anything, but they do generate leads for the eNewsletter, so the better they produce email subscribers, the more profitable they are even if they do not directly generate a penny.

This can all get fairly complex, which is why you have to think of each individual web effort on its own merit and with its own goals.

The outcome can be one of three things:

• Actual Revenue
• Links and Traffic
• Audience

Actual revenue might be a micro-site that is a one page website that sells something.  Since it probably costs less than $5 a month to host, you should be able to turn any website into at least a minor profit center with a solid product and good copywriting.

Links and Traffic are the currency of sites that you host, hopefully with minimal effort, that point to your higher value sites and drive traffic to them, as well as help them rank better.  These are “profitable” based on the total value of each visitor and link minus the cost to maintain.

Lastly, audience.  Also called the list and referred to as the most important asset a business has.  Have you given some thought to setting up a website that does nothing but offer a free white paper to build your list?  The long term value of your list, if used well should make your one page website & white paper download a big profit center, although not via direct sales.

Buzz Marketing is most effective with simple things that are easy to pass along.  If you keep focusing on the big picture, you are building bigger and more complex things and you may not know which parts are working.  If you create targeted efforts with clear potential for eventual profit, you will get more referrals and buzz.  It is just an easier message to communicate.
 

The uncomfortable truth about the buzz you have tonight is that it could lead to a headache in the morning.

I was just reviewing projects on a freelance job site and I was shocked at how many people are "Buying" unethical buzz.  You know, I will pay you one dollar per review to write great reviews about my restaurant on www.yelp.com – Not cool, man.

So if we cannot really trust these sites, what can we do to build trust?  People are only going to refer you if they understand you, appreciate what you are doing and have some trust that you will do what you say you will do.

The uncomfortable truth is that you have to invest in building solid visibility with a great foundation that cannot be faked.  Sure, you can get a lot of quick traffic from quick things, but if the traffic does not trust you, they will probably not do much in the end for you.

So how do you build a solid foundation that will help people trust you?

1. Blog – I know, I know….I am always suggesting a blog.  Look, if I told you to build a website, it would seem silly.  Everyone already has a website, right?  Blogs will be that common, and we are already seeing that many new businesses just start out with a blog and skip the whole website thing.

So how does a blog build trust?  Look at mine – 900+ articles.  All but a couple written by me.  (We have had some guest posts)  Sure, I could pay a writer to do it for me, and that would be fine as long as I am truly committed to putting out great information on my topic.  Trust me, at times I wish I could blame someone else for the writing.  The point is, even with my flaws I have built a trusted resource.

Does a blog work for a restaurant?  Sure.  There are all kinds of ways to create a real community around a blog/restaurant combo.

2. eNewsletter – When I started doing eNewsletters years ago we were blinded by the term Newsletter.  Don’t send people your news.  Send them special announcements that might be of value to them and send them great information they can use.  My autoresponder course runs with no effort on my part via aWeber and continues to generate clients every month.

3. Speak – Love it or hate it, even if you are speaking to a small local group, the very act of speaking puts gives you expert status (and trust) with the audience.

4. Social Networks – One way to participate in these communities is to set up an account, SPAM it and forget it.  The better (and harder but of higher value) way is to create an account, be clear and honest about who you are and use it actively to help people and occasionally promote yourself in a useful way.  You can become a trusted member of the community, but it takes time.

5. Blog commenting – by commenting on a blog with a quality, interesting comment you become a trusted member of the bloggers readership.  This can win you special recognition when they mention you or when other people click on your link and visit your site via the comment.  Just tell the truth about who you are and link back to a great resource for building additional trust (probably your blog.)

There are of course more ways to build and destroy trust.  These are fiv e that work well for me. 

Use the comments and let me know how you build trust with your audience.

I was very lucky to get involved with an excellent start up called Business Expert Webinars.  May 28th at 1:00 EST I will be presenting my first webinar on getting business results with your blog.  If you are interested in blogging or would like to get better results, be sure to sign up.

Part of the webinar is Avoiding Widget Creep.  How cool is that as a bullet?

We just started helping a new client with a great new website:  Showroom 411

I do not write about every client here, because I try to keep this blog relevant to Buzz Marketing.  However, showroom 411 has a very relevant story that could be an inspiration to you.

Rick Maselli is a builder.  Not terribly web-savvy and not a marketer.

Years ago, he improved his project outcomes by using links on the web to help clients pick out the fixtures and materials they wanted.  This grew into an access database, and now has launched a very comprehensive online community around DIY Home Improvement.  It brings together home improvement people, products with public reviews and contractors that are there to help if needed.

My question to you is this:  How many companies are out there sitting on all kinds of great information and simply do not know they can leverage that for buzz, visibility or to launch a whole new company?

Showroom 411 includes:

• How to videos
• How to guides
• Product reviews
• Contractor profiles
• And much more

Take a look and think – do you have another company in the making?

I toss around the term “relationships” a lot on this blog.  I am thinking that some readers may thing I mean a two way communication between you and the people you want relationships with.  There are a lot of ways that you can have a “two-way” relationship and never actually communicate with the other person directly.  Here are some examples.

Blogging – You push out your information (one-way) and the response you get is your website traffic, comments, etc.

Speaker – You speak – people listen.  (one-way) – The response you get is people talking to you after the talk, emailing you later, hiring you, etc.

eNewsletter – You publish your valuable information (one-way) and you get feedback,list subscriptions, unsubscribes, forwards to friends, etc.

Publish a Book -  You publish and market your book (one-way) and you get sales, speaking opportunities, hired as a consultant, PR, etc.

Social Networks -  You put up your profile (one way) and then people request to connect with you.  (This one is better if it is actively two way, but can be one way)

These are just some of the ways you can create relationships without having to get to know each person personally.  I like to get to know people, but realistically, there is only so much time in the day.  Using all of the tools above, I have created lots of relationships – many I am not even aware of.

What are you doing to create mass relationships?

Excellent post at Guy Kawasaki’s Blog.

This really speaks to our strategy for the last 4 years.  It is great to have big names recognize you, but it is easier and has great long term value if you focus on the mid-tier information players.

I have worked with a lot of people that come to us and say, “I want buzz!”

Some succeed, and some fail.  Buzz itself is not an acceptable goal.  If you just know you want buzz, you are dooming your effort.  The success factor has little to do with buzz, and everything to do with understanding what a reasonable goal is in the first place.

So what are some examples of good buzz goals I have seen?

Goal:  Increase search engine saturation for our brand.

Goal:  Increase local word of mouth to pass a levy that is too close to call.

Goal: Increase website traffic by creating links and referrals.

Goal:  Establish our expertise over the next 24 months in the ______ industry.

Goal:  Generate 10% more referrals by facilitating word of mouth on the web.

Goal: Build an audience that wants to hear from us – add a minimum of 500 names per month.

Goal: CEO to be interviewed by 4 bloggers per month.

Now some examples of bad goals:

Bad Goal:  I want to create buzz to blow the sales off the roof.

Bad Goal:  I want to be #1 in Google for a general term.

Bad Goal:  I want to have a blog/myspace page/facebook profile because I read about it and I have to.

Bad Goal:  I want people to go into Walmart and demand that they carry my product.

The list goes on.

Here is the simple key:  It is great to have long term goals that are big, but your short term buzz efforts must be achievable steps to realizing those dreams, not the dream itself.  Focus on things that will interest your target audience and be valuable (and/or) easy to pass on.

When a client, especially a new client, does not get what they are expecting, you are breaking an implied promise.  Once you break that first promise, they will be calulating in their head how much more they will take before letting you go.

Here are 10 ways you may have broken a promise to a client.

1. Return a phone call when you said you would.
2. Proposal or contract arrives the day you said it would.
3. Reported back progress when stipulated.
4. Delivered exactly what is expected.
5. Clear pricing that does not go up for this and that.
6. Built an ongoing, valueable relationship
7. Failed to thank client for referral
8. Did not follow up after delivery
9. Miss a scheduled meeting or lunch
10. Back-peddle on promises after sale

You cannot create buzz when you are creating regret.  I have been guilty of most of these at one time or another, especially when we were doing custom IT work (Which is why I do not pursue that work anymore).  The best you can doing is focus on the issue and work hard to eliminate it with better processes and customer service.  Great customer service does create great buzz.

You may know that studies have shown that optimists make better sales people. They do not quit and go start slinging burgers at the BK like the more intelligent pessimists do.

Do you believe this is a good thing?

The optimist keeps trying, and trying….

Don’t they understand that even the most positive optimist, when faced with someone trying to part them with their money, becomes a pessimist?

The deck is stacked against you, my optimistic friend.

Here are 7 reasons your optimistic attitude hurts your sales.

1. Optimistic Sales Person says: Look at all these great features and benefits my product has…
   Pessimistic Prospect thinks: How do I end this meeting faster?
    
2. Optimistic Sales Person says: You are going to save a lot of money!
   Pessimistic Prospect thinks: I am going to lose a lot of time and money converting.
    
3. Optimistic Sales Person says: This will make your company run more efficiently.
   Pessimistic Prospect thinks: Anything that adds complexity to my business will make things worse.
    
4. Optimistic Sales Person says: You owe it to yourself.
   Pessimistic Prospect thinks: I owe myself an early retirement because I am debt free.
    
5. Optimistic Sales Person says: This price is only good today.
   Pessimistic Prospect thinks: Liar.
    
6. Optimistic Sales Person says: We don’t have customers, we have friends.
   Pessimistic Prospect thinks: I don’t buy friendships.
    
7. Optimistic Sales Person says: We can customize it for you.
   Pessimistic Prospect thinks: Great. Now it is more expensive and won’t work at all.

If you are cursed with optimism, there is hope.  Understanding pessimism and how people are thinking, beyond what they are saying, will help you deal with your disadvantage.

Tags: Sales, Optimist, Pessimist